First State Brewers' Blog

2024-04-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

2024-02-02T19:15:00.000-08:00

New Wood Beer at DFH

2008-03-13T07:38:00.001-07:00

I ripped the following from a promotional DVD included in the 4-packs of the new DFH brown ale conditioned on Paraguayan Palo Santo wood

Enjoy!

PART I:

~~~

PART II:

SPARK! Mag info

2007-04-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all ~ John here.

If any new or old faces have seen the SPARK! Mag story , here's a specific update, plus links, on the local beers I listed.

My choices are all available locally.

In general, there are 2 great places I frequent that have a great beer selection: State Line Liquor (SLL; Elton Road, Elkton, PA) and Brewer's Outlet , (BO; Rte 202, Chadds Ford, PA just above the DE/PA border), in addition to other local marts.

By and large, my beer tastes adhere to my mantra of 'Support Your Local Craft Brewer' so all choices are by local Mid-Atlantic breweries. These selections serve as a good survey of great local beer (all apologies to the local brewpubs, as I wished to focus on off-premise retail buys)

~~~

VICTORY Golden Monkey (Downingtown, PA) ~ excellent domestic facsimile of a Belgian-style Strong Ale; warm, sweet and perfumy. Corked 750mL bottles are available and suitable for aging, like fine wine. SLL
VICTORY website

TROEGS HopBack Amber Ale (Harrisburg, PA) ~ an emerging giant in the craft-brew world, Troegs makes this superb American-style ale that does not shy away from hops with aggressive pine & citrus characteristics. SLL
TROEGS website

RAMSTEIN Blonde Wheat Beer (High Point, NJ) ~ the best Bavarian hefeweizen (German wheat) made domestically, brewed by a friend who trained at an all-wheat beer brewery in Germany. BO
HIGH POINT website

TWIN LAKES Route 52 Pilsner (Greenville, DE) ~ Delaware's newest brewery; their artesian well-water source shines through in this unfiltered lager. Available for 'growler' fills directly from the brewery & on tap locally.
TWIN LAKES website

DOGFISH HEAD Worldwide Stout (Milton, DE) ~ A modern legend. At ~18-23% alcohol by volume, it is perfect for aging. A few bottles from their first bottling can still be found my own beer cellar. Needs to be sipped like a fine port in a snifter. SLL
DH website

WE HAVE MOVED

2007-03-10T05:42:00.000-08:00

We are taking our blog elsewhere. We'll leave the stuff here for the time being... but any new updates are at:

http://www.firststatebrewers.com/blog/

Thanks for following us at our new location!

-Garrett, Scott, and the rest of the FSB bloggers.

Peated Scottish v2

2007-03-04T03:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, today is a brewing day in the Sever household - the first in over a month! I've been seriously slacking, but more on that later. Today is a peated scottish ale, probably in the 1.050 to 1.055 range. Its one I have been meaning to do for some time - the ingredients are about a year old, so hopefully things will work out just fine - but the Golden Promise 2-row and Peated Malt were purchased some time way back when some club members did a big order to North Country Malt Supply>. Its not that I couldn't have done it before, or that I couldn't have used these ingredients for something else in the meantime - I just always managed to slide something in before it. Since the peated malt is over a year old, it has a much more mellow and subtle aroma (and I am guessing flavor) than it did back in March 2006 when Scott Bieber asked me "what did you DO to this?!?!? It tastes like peat moss!!" It obviously won't be ready for folks to try at this year's Jerry & Joyce St. Pats extravaganza - but I'll probably torture folks with it sometime around May or June.

I've been very busy doing research for a semi-automated / computerized homebrew sculpture. I say "semi-automated" because I don't want to just press the GO button and it does all the work - I want the computer to do smart temperature control and facilitate some of the more tedious exercises while brewing like measuring out water, or doing mash steps. **I** still want to be the brewer, but I want to exact a level of precision and repeatability over my batches that I don't have right now. I also want to be able to capture brew session data and have the ability to analyze it later if something truely wonderful happens (or awful, as the case may be).

So instead of brewing, I've been playing with electronics - programmable microcontrollers, resistors, capacitors, logic chips, LEDs, etc. - I used to know all that stuff, and have managed to forget it in the years since I learned it in college.

If you feel like amusing yourself, go to the Tech section of our website and check out "Electrobrew", my tentative name for this endeavor. I don't know what the project will ultimately be called, but that's good enough for now.

I won first place for my Choking Sun Stout at War of the Worts XII, which got me a $50 gift certificate to Keystone Homebrew Supply up in PA. Looks like I am going to have to make a pilgrimage to spend it, but there are always tons of other things to do in Philly that would warrant the trip.

Also, looks my family and some friends are all going to the Belgian beer festival at Ommegang in July. After reading of the experience from the assistant brewer at Iron Hill Newark, I convinced my wife that pitching a tent among the other bohemians was not something we wanted to do, so we are looking at getting a cabin some (walkable) distance away where we don't have to endure the all-night drum circles and idiots stumbing into our area, begging for late-night handouts.

Last but not least, we are MOVING our blog from Blogspot to our domain and using the Wordpress platform. Blogger has been reasonably good for us, but honestly I feel better having it on our own site. If you are reading this entry at http://www.firststatebrewers.com/blog/ then you are already ahead of the game.

If not, start checking http://www.firststatebrewers.com/blog/ instead, because that's where we are headed.

More belgian fury...

2007-01-29T16:58:00.000-08:00

As my post over on the Google group indicated, I brewed more belgian style beer on Sunday morning... 10 gallons of what was supposed to be a somewhat mild brew that could support 3 or 4 in an evening without dropping the hammer... and it didn't turn out that way. Instead I'm probably looking at a 7-8% beer...

It is using a yeast cake from the Heretic Strong Dark Ale I brewed back in early January, meaning the Unibroue strain from Wyeast (3864). It smells absolutely divine as it is fermenting, and once again I am hoping that it tastes as good as it smells.

Check out that monster fermenter - a 12 gallon pyrex solution bottle, loaned to me by Oliver Weatherbee (Thanks, man!!). It weighs a freakin' ton, especially full! I've got it fitted with a BBBOT. I do wonder how accurate that stick-on thermometer is with all that glass - isn't glass an insulator? It might be like 3 or 4 degrees higher inside the bottle than it is on the surface... But hey, this yeast is good to 80 degrees, so I should be fine.

Speaking of the Heretic, here it sits in the secondary, three weeks and many days after primary fermentation subsided... and as you can tell, the yeast is still flocculating. I thought about putting it out in the garage to make it fall faster, but I'm in no hurry, so the yeast can take their time. I just hope there is enough active yeast left to carbonate it - I may end up taking a small measure of the yeast from the 10 gallon batch and pitching it in with the priming sugar.

Coming of War

2007-01-18T06:18:00.000-08:00

... of the Worts XII on Feb 17th. I have been looking at my bottled beer inventory (as well as those that I could quickly put into bottles with my counter-pressure filler) and trying to decide what to send into this Feb 17th competition. I have a couple that I know will be dogged by the judges, but I think the $5 entry fee is probably worth it to get feedback. Here are my considerations:

Sirius Black Honey Ale	12B - Robust Porter
Ed's Special Reserve Porter	12B - Robust Porter
Ed's Special Reserve Porter	22C - Wood-aged beer
Choking Sun Stout	13D - Foreign Extra Stout
My Wife's Nutty Brown	(Undecided - American brown or English Northern?)
Nightmare Stout	21A - Spice, Herb, or Veg Beer
The Beer Formerly Known As Hopocalypse	14C - Imperial IPA
Saison du Sevier	16C - Saison

I entered My Wife's Nutty in the 2006 Buzz-Off competition and got comments that it didn't have enough hop character to balance it in the Northern category, and would be better as a Southern Brown - However this is a new batch and I feel that it *IS* hoppier, so I am torn between putting it in the same category where it only got 31/50 last time or trying a different one entirely - namely the American Brown. It doesn't have American hops, so that is probably a bad idea (used Bullion and Kent Golding, I think) which probably means I should stick to English Northern or Southern.

I am entering my dad's bourbon porter in two categories, both the wood aged and robust porter, because I don't know how best to categorize it. The oak and bourbon flavors only come through in the aftertaste, and it grows slowly as you sip your way through the beer - so the judges are likely not to get much of it with only 2oz. It may end up having too much oak & bourbon for just robust porter, but not enough for the wood-aged category - that would suck.

So if I enter things as listed above, I am looking at losing basically 16 beers and $41 to entry fees, but that's cool with me. Hopefully I'll walk away with a ribbon or two for it, and I'll definitely get lots of good feedback... hopefully constructive and informative, although that isn't always the case.

I think the next competition that has a firm date on the schedule is this year's Buzz-Off in summer, so I'll have several months to build my bottle inventory back up... and I'll have a whole new batch of beers to try out in that competition.

New year brew year

2007-01-10T19:56:00.000-08:00

I may have very well brewed my best belgian ever.

Saturday (Jan 6th) was my first beer brewed in 4 weeks. Last was my homegrown ale on December 10th. Amazing that I only brewed 5 gallons in December - but we were gone for 2 weeks on vacation to Atlanta, so I shouldn't be suprised. I brewed 5 gallons of a belgian-style strong dark ale, which I intend to bottle-condition in corked belgian 750mL bottles. I'm pretty excited about it, and am happy as can be brewing again - I almost forgot how much I enjoy it. I used a whole bottle (16 oz) of Dark Candi Syrup and the Unibroue yeast strain (Wyeast 3864) so it should turn out pretty good, and different than anything else I've brewed to date.

I also took a key learning from my last batch of Dubbel and mashed at a higher temperature since I managed to ferment that last batch down to 1.009 (Yikes!!!) Maybe it was the yeast's fault (WLP530 Abbey Ale).... Oliver reported similar results, although he managed to ferment down to 1.006...

It is now 4 days after brewing, and primary fermentation has been winding down for a day or so. Let me tell you - if the aromas that are coming from the fermenter are any indication of how the beer tastes - I am going to be a REALLY happy man.

The floor corker I got for christmas just totally rocks out. I can't wait to use it on this batch of beer... and many others this year. I am more than willing to share if any of you out there are interested in corking one of your batches.

I've got a ton of bottles out in my garage again that need the PBW cleaning and label-stripping treatment... Many of them are belgian-style bottles (Many many thanks to John Biggins!!!!) so I can avoid the exhorbitant $20/case of 12 price that you must buy them for. Unfortunately several of them have some sort of wicked screen printing on them (Corsendonk Brown, Unibroue Terrible, and of course all the Delerium bottles) so I am not sure I can use them. I tried using lacquer thinner to get the paint off, and it was completely ineffective... I am suspecting that the paint is probably some oven-cured enamel that was baked on (and may have fused with the glass). I haven't given up hope on them yet... but I am struggling with what my next step should be. At some point the effort to remove the paint is going to outweigh the cost of buying them new... particularly if I can get them cheap from Victory Brewing Co. in the spring. Anyone out there got new ideas? I've already ruled out paint thinner, lacquer thinner, acetone, and "Goof Off!".

2007 Commeth

2006-12-31T22:29:00.000-08:00

Yeah, its 11:55PM before the year changes, and I'm sitting here writing a blog post instead of snoozing upstairs with my wife or watching all the sheeple on TV in time square... but that's me. What can I say.

2006 is gone, and with it goes alot (ALOT) of beer brewing. I won't rack up the total this year for fear of legal reprisal, but I was a very prodigious homebrewer. I did try to ask the government how to legally brew more than 200 gallons in a year, and received a relatively unsatisfactory and dismissive answer to the issue, and I took that response with the degree of urgency and attention it commanded. Seems that it warranted as much attention as I gave the warning too, considering the overwhelming discussion on the subject.

Actually, In 2006 I ended up giving away almost 80+ gallons, and I've still got about 40+ gallons sitting downstairs in the basement.... and we had alot of help from family and friendly visits. I definitely have left 2006 with a whole laundry list of learnings to take with me, and an arsenal of recipes that will be tweaked and revisited in the coming years.

Some of my personal homebrewing highlights for 2006 include:

Winning second place for my imperial stout in my first homebrew competition
Having Ric Hoffman from Stewart's come to the May meeting and talk to us
Getting feedback from Scott Bickham (Grand master Level II judge) indicating he rated my Saison a 37/50... and if you've ever read his (brutally honest) reviews of commercial beers in Zymurgy, that's something to feel good about.
Getting re-elected as 2007 President of FSB - I must be doing something right, or I'm a total sucker...
Assisting at Twin Lakes with a batch of Greenville Pale Ale.

I've had lots of positive feedback indicating my homebrewing is on the right track, and that people like what I'm doing. I try to take that with a grain of salt since most comes from friends and family, but to be honest those are the folks I most care about pleasing - the rest is just gravy.

I've managed to acquire many new tools and toys that I will be taking into the 2007 brewing year, including:

Motorization of my Crankenstein 3-roll mill, much to the appreciation of my abused Dewalt hand drill.
Acquiring a floor corker to handle belgian bottles and corks, so I can have that swanky presentation that Victory and Ommegang enjoy
A 28 gallon kettle with false bottom, so I can brew 20 gallon batches - What are you supposed to do when you 10-gallon-like something, and your family and friends also 10-gallon-like it?!??!

This coming year, I plan on focusing on a couple of things. They include:

Volume - 20 gallons of beer per batch may seem like alot, but man - when you share batches with friends, family, and other homebrewers, it goes fast.
Belgians - Brewing 2 or 3 batches of Dubbels or Tripels a year is not the way to master styles that are more of an art than a science... So corker, get ready - you are in for some abuse. Kegs - Take a breather, 'cause 5 gallons of bad belgian ain't worth it.
Whole hops - All my operative kettles will have false bottoms, so why use pellets when I can filter out fresher and more "pure" tasting ingredientS?

Well, it is now well past 1am, and I am not forming nearly the kind of thoughts I was 3 pints ago, so time to take the first descansa of the new year. Happy tidings to all!

Meeting this Friday (Dec 15th)!!!

2006-12-11T03:16:00.000-08:00

Come join us for the last meeting of 2006 at Scott's house this Friday at 7:30pm. The directions / invite came out last night, so hopefully you all got it. We will be electing our 2007 officers, and I will be giving away hops and grain.

Yesterday was a beautiful day for brewing - I managed to squeeze in my 2006 Homegrown Pale Ale. I used 3oz of Homegrown Nugget and 4.5oz of Homegrown Cascade - At the left you can see that part of those additions were for first wort-hopping (FWH). The hops quite honestly still smelled "planty" so I am wondering if I harvested a little too early... but with the quantity I used, I am hoping this year's batch has more hop armoa and flavor than last - The 2005 batch tasted more like a bock beer than a pale ale. My gravity came in around 1.061 so it should have plenty of kick.

Finally, Joe from How Do You Brew? ordered and received some stuff for me that I am really excited about - he ordered Wyeast 3864 Canadian Belgian, a seasonal offering that is supposedly the Unibroue strain and 2 cases of Belgian-style beer bottles... YEAH! As it turns out, his supplier just started carrying them recently. They cost a small fortune ($20/case of 12), however they are available. When spring comes I will probably buy some cases cheaper through Victory Brewing, however these should help fill the interim between now and April/May. I still need your empties, if you've got 'em!!

Beauty of Burton

2006-11-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

Or alternatively titled, "Why I wish I had an open fermenter"... look at this beautiful, bountiful, thick creamy yeast. Sometimes brewing in carboys and demjohns really suck. I would LOVE to be able to top-crop that stuff. Burton does this, the Belgian Abbey Ale (WLP530) does it, and several other strains do too - and that is just 100% good, healthy, ready to be repitched yeast.

YEAH, I know I could just use a bucket. I'm entirely too snotty for that.

Save the Belgians!

2006-11-24T17:19:00.000-08:00

OK, so really I am talking about saving your empties - the ones that come corked with the wire cage on them. Actually there are a whole bunch that do - and even domestic breweries like Ommegang, Unibroue, and Victory are bottling in these things. Unfortunately I cannot find ANYONE locally that sells them... so I need to get empties and clean / strip them. Reason being is that I am expecting to get an italian floor corker for christmas, with which I will be able to actually cork and cage my brews if desired. So please - if you have empties lying around, or generate some - Please save these bottles for me! I do plan on writing to Ommegang and Victory to see if they're willing to divulge their source... but I'm not holding my breath on getting a response.

I currently have 9 empty belgians I processed today along with 4 new cases of 12oz bottles. They are all now sitting downstairs comfortably, cleaned, de-labeled, and ready for santizing and filling. It took about 3 hours or so, but hey - its cheaper than paying a ton of money at the LHBS for more cases.

Last but not least, some of you may have read my recent mild rant over at the newsgroup about White Labs yeast vitality from HDYB, however I am here to say that starters saved the day. It took over 48 hours for the yeast to revitalize and for the starter to kick in and show signs of activity, however it ultimately did. I ended up having to postpone my brew day a little, however pitching a more healthy and active culture definitely makes me more confident about this batch. I'm sorry, but you just don't screw around with potentially bad yeast when you're brewing 10 gallon batches. And I must say to all of you out there that DON'T do yeast starters - you are playing with fire. This yeast was supposedly still 2 weeks away from the "Use by" date, and it had a 48 hour lag. Do you really want 48 hours to go by before your yeast can start defending that batch of beer you just made? 48 hours for bacteria or wild yeast to kick off first? Yeah, I thought not.

Choking Sun Stout v2.0

2006-11-06T19:48:00.000-08:00

So Sunday I brewed my second 10 gallon batch of Choking Sun Stout. It went VERY well, and I think I have definitely found the source of my stuck sparges - My grain mill was still set to crush wheat malt. It was shredding the crap out of the husks... Why I didn't notice until this batch... I dunno. I haven't changed the mill setting since my last batch of Saison, which was only 3 months (and like 5 batches) ago.

As you can see, I've got alot better crush now - The kernels are broken into several pieces, but the husks are almost completely intact. Yee haw. If only I had noticed back when I was brewing that damn pumpkin stout (which was VERY tasty, BTW).

I also made good use of my false bottom this time around, using whole hops for the complete hop bill - And I have to sincerely apologize to Oliver. He was so right saying that he by far preferred using whole over pellets. The aroma was better, there was significantly less crud in the fermenter, and it just FELT right. Sorry I convinced you to buy all those pellets from North Country Malt Supply, man! We should have just ordered from Freshops last fall too...

Last but not least, I'd say that the results of Project Uberkraeusen were successful - 24 hours, and the damn yeast is ready to blow out of the demijohn (even with 4 gallons of headspace). I fortunately fitted it with a big bore blowoff tube this time around, so I don't need to worry about blown airlocks. I pitched a 1.5L starter from a single White Lab 004 vial after a little more than 24 hours, and I have no worries at all that I've got sufficient yeast in there. If anything... I gotta make sure I keep the temperature down!!!

A very good weekend, all in all... and with my mill back cranking out the good crush and a deep freezer full of whole hops... I can't wait to brew again.

Project Uberkraeusen

2006-11-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

OK. So its just a yeast starter... but I just love how much air you can beat into the wort and yeast with a "+" shaped stir bar. Should be some mighty healthy WLP004 Irish Ale yeast for tomorrow's 10 gallon brew of Choking Sun Stout.

S^4 Ale Recipe

2006-11-04T06:23:00.000-08:00

My last few posts have centered around my experiment using the strong runnings from Stewart's latest batch of barleywine. I had a sudden "AHA!" when I went to get the recipe, and have a much better idea why the beer has such a strong flavor, which until now I've been unable to really nail down... HOPS.

Yeah, I used about double what I thought... so my guess is that many of the flavors are just unincorporated hop flavors that will blend and mellow with age - the brew is more like a low octane english barleywine than maybe a traditional strong ale... not sure. At any rate, for 10 gallons:

Fermentables

13.5 gallons Stewart's Brewing Co barleywine strong runnings (made from Maris Otter and 3-5% Crystal 60L, ~1.060 SG)
2 lb English Amber malt
1 lb English Crystal 45-55L
6 oz English Chocolate malt

Hops (12 oz total):

3oz Kent Golding pellets (5.7% AA) FWH
1oz Kent Golding pellets (5.7% AA) 60 min
2oz Kent Golding pellets (5.7% AA) 15 min
2oz Fuggles pellets (5.7% AA) 5 min
2oz Fuggles pellets (5.7% AA) 1 min
2oz Willamette pellets (5.7% AA) 1 min

Yeast: 2 packages Nottingham Dry Ale yeast

Instructions:

Steep grains for 20-30 minutes between 155-165 deg in full volume of wort. Periodically (every 3-5 minutes) "tea-bag" the grain bag. Do not squeeze grain bag when removed.
Boil total of 90 minutes
2 servomyces @ 10 minutes, 1 whirfloc tablet @ 5 minutes
Oxygenate 3 minutes per 10 gallons @ 75 deg and pitch yeast

Session stats:
Original Gravity: 19.8 brix (~1.079)
Fermentation temperature: 70-73 deg
Final Gravity: 1.016 (hydrometer)
Calculated %ABV: 8.5
Calculated IBUs: 57.5 (Rager)

So there you have it. Lots of hops, but supposedly not an overwhelming amount of IBUs. Despite that - I think the 12oz really packed in alot of hop flavor, which at the moment is hitting my palette as "medicinal". That should mellow with age.

I'm not saying that I don't have fusels in there... cause Jebus knows there probably are... but its probably not as big a deal as I was originally thinking. I think once it ages for 6 months or so, this ought to be a tasty (albeit pretty hoppy) brew.

S^4 Ale Update

2006-11-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

So tonight I have braved the torrent again, and cracked open my second bottle of Stewart's Sloppy Seconds Strong Ale (S^4 Ale).... and have found it not altogether disagreable. I think that it was definitely way too young last time I tried it... and things appear to be improving as it ages. I suppose I shouldn't be OVERLY suprised by that, but I am nevertheless.

I also actually tried a sample from my keg downstairs early last week and found it to be much better than the bottle I tried at the time, so I am not sure what exactly is at work here... but I am starting to have hope that this beer is gonna be OK given enough aging.

Let me also quantify - It is significantly more carbonated than last time, and I am drinking it at "cellar" temperatures (around 62 degrees) instead of around 40-45. The warmer temperatures probably help enhance the aromatic nature (and let me tell you - this is one seriously aromatic brew) as well as lighten the body, and the carbonation definitely helps lighten the body. I can still taste the background sweetness and some off the "medicinal" flavors from before, but they are greatly reduced...

I strongly suspect it will still leave someone who overimbibes with a whole percussion ensamble thundering away in their skull... but only time will tell.

I will try to bring a bottle to the next meeting in two weeks (Nov 17th) at HDYB for folks to sample... WARM, of course!

Good ideas gone bad

2006-10-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

Well, it may have finally happened. I might have created my first homebrew candidate destined for an unceremonius end of its existence - down the drain. Thus is the plight of my S^4 Ale, "Stewarts Sloppy Seconds Strong Ale".

Some weeks ago, Stewart's brewed their annual barleywine, and Ric was kind enough to call me and ask if I wanted their strong runnings. They had sparged all they were going to need, but since it was a barleywine... lots of sugars were left in the grains. I very excitedly accepted and had my wife run over three carboys around noon. They filled them full sometime around noon or one, and I swung by around 5:30 to get the wort.

I got the wort home, poured 13.5 gallons of it from the carboys into the kettle and heated it up to 165 degrees. I then steeped some additional specialty grains (Crystal, etc) for extra color and flavor, and after 45 minutes began the boil. I boiled for about 75 minutes, adding 3 oz of Kent Golding 5.7%AA for bittering, 3 oz of Fuggles for Flavor, and 2 oz of Willamette for Aroma. The Willamette was a last minute addition because the Fuggles didn't have any aroma to them at all... (they were about a year old, but sat in my deep freezer the whole time). I got about 9 gallons of 1.080 wort into the demijohn, pitched 2 packages of Nottingham Ale yeast, and it fermented like crazy for several days - everything seemd just fine.

Fast forward several weeks, and I have now kegged 5 gallons and bottled the other 4 or so gallons. The bottles have been sitting around for a week, and I figure I'd crack one open and see what it tastes like, even if it is still a little flat and young.

An initial flavor of cherries and ripe red fruit quickly fade into Nyquil and lighter fluid. Imagine 2 seconds of excitement followed by several seconds of washing out my mouth with water and spitting it into the sink.

WHAT THE SAM HELL HAPPENED?

Well, I am not sure... but lets run through the possibilities for giggles.

Sour wort - The carboys that went to Stewarts were clean, but not sanitized. I suppose the wort could have sat there and slowly soured between 1pm and 6pm, but that seems very unlikely.
Hot side aeration - I poured the wort from the carboys into the kettle, so there was significant splashing. That's supposed to create cardboard flavors, not a phenolic onslaught that rips your tongue off, right!??!
Bad hops - Well, the Fuggles were a little sketchy since they didn't have any aroma, but that shouldn't have made the beer taste THAT bad, I don't think.
Too many hops - 8 oz of low alpha English hops for 10 gallons of 1.080 beer?!? Dream on.
Fermentation temperature - Ooooh, ok this one is a possibility. It was in my Demijohn, and I had a beast of a time keeping it cool. It might have spit out fusel alcohols like no one's business - And even thought the stick-on fermenter said it was 72-73 degrees... maybe it was alot hotter in the center of that demijohn.
Infection - I am usually pretty careful about sanitation, if not waaay overboard. This beer didn't seem to want to clear for a while, but I assumed that was because of 2 packages of dry yeast (which is ALOT). The yeast all seemed to settle out, and I didn't ever have anything funky-looking in the carboys, so I don't think that was it. Maybe though.

Now, all that said - It may still be too early to tell what's gonna happen here. With some extended aging, the fusels (if that is indeed the problem) may break down and actually mellow out. Same goes if I had a hop problem - those flavors should also mellow.

Is "S4 Ale" ever going to be a great beer? Doubtful... but at this point I'll settle for something that doesn't compel me to grab a match, or threaten to cause organ failure.

Weekend of beer

2006-10-23T07:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, What a weekend.

It began on Friday, when I took the day off to go and provide labor to the Twin Lakes Brewery in Greenville. Mark has been very kind and worked with me to schedule an opportunity, and after many changes it finally happenened. My morning began there at 4am, where we filled the tun with some foundation water and opened the grain hopper slide valve... They had milled the first batch the previous night, so I had a slight reprieve from hauling grain bags. One the grain was mashed in, the tun's steam jacketing quickly raised the mash to temperature. We were ready to mash out and transfer sometime around 5:30am. That's when the fun began...

We opened the valve at the bottom of the mash tun and waited for the grain slurry to run down into the lauter tun. Nothing came out except a tiny trickle of wort. A flurry of panic and activity ensued for the next 45 minutes trying to unclog an enormous plug of grain right at the exit of the mash tun, which is near impossible to get at. I won't explain exactly how the situation was resolved, but suffice it to say that the solution bordered on dangerous. The guys (Mark, George, & Jack) were acutely aware of that fact and did everything they could to position folks out of harm's way. I dare say DuPont would be proud. No one got hurt or scalded, and with only a minor mess to clean up, the grain slurry ran into the lauter tun in short order. I asked Mark if that had ever happened... he said no, it was a first.

Since there was such a long delay, the grain hulls got a little soggy, and we ended up with a stuck mash 3 times on the first batch - It took about 2 hours to sparge enough to get the required 725 gallons. The remainder of the batch went without a hitch.

I witnessed and participated in all kinds of very interesting activities:

Hauling and slicing open 1450 lbs of grain and sending it up to the mill for the second batch
Emptying the lauter tun using 55 gallon trash cans (Man, that was alot of grain!!!)
Measuring out 12 lb charges of Cascade hops into a trash can, and adding them to the kettle
Shoveling spent hops out of the hop back
Pitching 60 gallons (!!!) of yeast into the giant 1550gal conicals they've got (Mark's a genious here... very cool setup).
Running the yeast out of the other 2 conicals

While they ran the first batch's wort through the heat exchanger to the fermenter, they began mashing in the second batch. This time mark gave me some directions and let me actually add the foundation water, and do some of the mashing in. While the second batch mashed, we did many of the activities listed above. Time came to lauter the second mash - STUCK AGAIN, just like the first batch. I couldn't believe it - that had never happened before, and it happened twice in one day. Fortunately this time they knew just what to do, and we had the mash unplugged and in the lauter tun in under 10 minutes. The second batch lautered EXTREMELY well, and we didn't get a stuck mash at all.

About the time they were finishing up lautering the second batch, I headed out to get some food - it was about 1pm and I was starving. I ran down the road, grabbed a sandwich from Einstein Bros, and came back to find all the overhead lights out. "What's up??", I asked... no one seemed to know - It hadn't ever happened before. About 15 minutes later... BAM!!! Everything shut down, after they had been boiling for about 20 minutes. No electricity meant no steam boiler, and no steam boiler meant no boiling. Long story short, an Electrician from Shure-Line showed up, checked around, and they found that some power lines had gotten twisted due to the high winds. He couldn't fix that, and it was going to be 4pm at the earliest before Delmarva could show up. To pass the time, Mark, George, Jack, another avid homebrewer Ryan, and I sampled the two beers I had brought - Hopocalypse and Saison. They seemed to enjoy them. About 3pm, I bid my farewells, knowing full well that 4pm to Delmarva means like 5 or 6pm. Mark was concerned that they would have to dump the second batch - but I don't know how all that turned out. I will have to find out this week.

It was a fantastic experience, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I hope I get another opportunity to do it again. I am also very appreciative of how much hard work being a professional brewer is, and admire them for being able to do it day in and day out - I don't think I could.

I arrived home to find a cord of wood dropped off on our driveway, which meant more labor as it was hauled around back and stacked. An hour later, I sat exhausted on the couch, relaxing until our club meeting that night. The meeting went well, although many of us departed early (9:30pm - 10pm), myself included. It had been a very long day.

Saturday was the All-Grain demonstration at How Do You Brew? in Newark. About 6-8 people showed up to watch us brew 10 gallons of Oatmeal Stout, which went pretty well. I missed my mash-in temperature by 5 degrees - I hit 148 instead of 153, so it may be more fermentable than I wanted, but fortunately it lautered very well. We got all the wort volume needed in about 30 minutes and didn't have a stuck mash at all, and were right on (if not a little higher) gravity-wise. The whole process went much faster than the last demonstration, and I was packed up and headed home by 5pm - so it was a 6 hour brew day. I went home with very little dirty equipment to clean, 1/2 of the batch (5 gal), and enough 2-row for my next 10 gallon AG batch - Many thanks, Joe and Marlana!

On a related note, I think I have several theories on why my last few batches have all ended in stuck fermentations, and I hope to eliminate that little nuisance going forward. I think alot of things have all come together to cause the problem (finer crush on the grain, longer sparging times, thicker mashes, etc) and once I work through them it should go away. I also have a much better perspective after watching a 1450 lb mash get stuck several times, and seeing what kind of clarity they typically look for before running to the kettle - As homebrewers we may spend entirely too much time on the inconsequential minutia instead of seeing the big picture - Is crystal-clear wort a requirement to make good tasting beer? Hardly. Is a stuck mash a big deal? Not really.

I have alot of stuff to do tonight while the wife is at Welding school - Keg the 10 gal of Nightmare Stout and rack 10 gal of Porter to secondaries and throw in bourbon oak chips. Doesn't sound like much, but between the cleaning and sanitizing of 2 kegs and 2 carboys - it takes time. I'll probably still be racking when she gets home.

Next brews on the Sever agenda:

10 gal Choking Sun Stout
5 gal Foggy Moor Peated Scottish 80/-
5 gal Clan Morrison Scotch Ale
5 gal Homegrown Ale 2006
5 gal Summit Pale Ale

Of course I think I am going to run out of time & allowed capacity well before I get through all of that.

Meeting Friday!!! (Oct 20th)

2006-10-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

We have a meeting this friday at Jeff Ramberg's house. Scott sent the address out yesterday... use MapQuest or Google Maps to get directions.

At the meeting, Oliver Weatherbee is going to bring some iso-alpha extract to do a demonstration with using Coors or some other needlessly flavorless beer. It actually provides bittering without requiring a boil!! I will probably bring a growler of my latest batch of Oak Vanilla Porter, which needs help. I'm not sure if its a lack of bittering that is the problem, or if I somehow got something in it... We'll see.

I'll also try to bring a couple bottles of my Oktoberfest - It turned out GOOD, but I'll have to sneak it past the wife... oh wait. She'll have to help me counterpressure fill it, so no sneaking.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet...

2006-10-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

Yeah. I got the stuff. I know you all want it. Now stop drooling already... and go get your own.

There's something to be said...

2006-10-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

...about tried & true, particularly as it pertains to brewing recipes. I feel like I really kind of stepped "outside of my box" this summer and fall and brewed some pretty wacky shtuff, but at the same time I feel like I've made alot of beers that aren't up to my typical caliber. I guess that is all part of learning and growing in your passions...

My last two brewing experiences have really kind of shaken me to the core.... My nightmare stout of two weeks ago is now sitting in secondaries, looking decidedly more brown than black and with a not too distant resemblance from the stuff I poured out of the steam cleaner tonight when I did our carpets... Yuck. I still keep hoping that it will drop clearer and turn a nice dark stouty-like color, but I'm seriously doubting it anymore. Not wishing to be beaten, I had my wife go out and buy another pie pumpkin, which is already roasted and ready for a minimash - but quite honestly, I have to say I don't give a $#!t anymore. I don't care if that beer beat me this time around - I want to get back to brewing stuff I like and know I can do well, so it is probably either going to go in a pie or down the garbage disposal.

I brewed a barleywine with a buddy this weekend (see Gnarlywine at FoolCircle.net), and while the experience went relatively well - I still had issues with stuck sparges and MASSIVE amounts of break in the kettle. When we racked it into the fermenters, it looked like someone puked in our carboys. I assume it is still doing OK downstairs... it looks ugly as hell, but it is still bubbling every 5-10 seconds or so, so the yeast are still chewing on something... but again, I am nervous if that beer will come out OK.

Truth be told, I'm feeling a little shaken and off my game. I think for a while I'm going to hang up the wacky hat and get down to what I do best - browns, porters, and stouts - with a few hop monsters thrown in to shake things up. My brewing schedule for right now is looking like the following:

10 gal Bourbon Oak Porter
5 gal Peated Scottish 80/-
5 gal Clan Morrison Scotch Ale
10 gal Choking Sun Stout
5 gal Summit Pale Ale
10 gal My Wife's Nutty Brown Ale
20 gal Black Honey Ale
10 gal Amarillo Pale Ale

Lots of familiar recipes in there, along with one or two "experimental" batches, but even then the experimental batches are very tame. Note to self... contact ATF and find out what it takes to brew more than the 200gal limit in a year. I'll pay the taxes, dammit!!!

On another note, I've got about 9-10 pounds of whole-leaf hops headed my way from Freshops.com. I ended picking up quite a haul of Amarillo, Columbus, Simcoe, and various other whole-leaf varieties that aren't available through our local shop, and for a very reasonable price. Freshops rocks! One of the more interesting varieties is a pound of Pacific Gem hops, which are supposed to be around 13-15%AA and have a blackberry character... Can't wait to brew up some porter or ESB with those things.

Nightmare Stout

2006-09-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

I have never been moved to tears from frustration when brewing an all-grain batch of beer before - until tonight. I am quite convinced I found an alternative formulation for concrete, and it takes the form of my ill-fated pumpkin stout recipe. I ultimately ended up getting the b@stard brewed, but with severe compromises and consequences... Of which I will enumerate below.

Let's begin with the recipe (10 gallon intended formulation):

12 lb Maris Otter 2-row
4 lb Munich
4 lb Flaked Barley
8 oz Muntons Black Roasted Barley
8 oz Muntons Chocolate Malt

1 lb Rice Hulls

2-3 Pie pumpkins, roasted @ 350 degF for 1 hour (about 8-10 lb of pumpkin mush)

2.5oz Whole Northern Brewer hops, 7.1%AA (60 min)
2 small cinnamon sticks (5 min)
2.0oz East Kent Golding (Flame Out)
0.33oz Pie Spices (Flame Out)

So there it is. I am quite convinced that 4lb of Flaked barley and 10 lb of pumpkin was pushing my luck for a single mash tun... perhaps even for 2. It all mashed just fine and converted without a problem. I had so little room left in the mash tun that I actually pulled 8qts of thick mash and did a quick 20 minute decoction to bring the whole thing up to 162 deg F. Then the horror began.

I cracked the valve to begin the vourlauf and collected about 2qt before flow stopped entirely. I opened the valve entirely... nothing. Nothing coming out. At this point I had only added a half pound of rice hulls, so I added the other half, scraped the cement off the top of my false bottom, let it settle for another 10 minutes, and tried again.... with the same result. I couldn't get the stuff to sparge AT ALL. Long story short, I ended up employing my 10 gallon kettle, another mash tun, and ultimately a friggin 2 qt collander and my wife to just get the liquid off the grain bed. I collected 13.5 gallons to boil... but with only a 55-60% efficiency, which meant I had to add 2 pounds worth of DME I had laying around (for big yeast starters) just to get the wort in the right ballpark gravity.

Boiling there was ton of grain matter and protein churning around due to my way substandard (albeit necessary) sparging technique, and when the whole hops got added it looked like a big bubbling cauldren of disaster.... and it was. I managed to get the boil completed, and after a relatively reasonable cooling duration and whirlpool began runoff... at which point the Northern Brewer whole hops joined forces with the other crap in my wort and formed a concrete layer ontop of the false bottom. My 1/2" valve and tubing was letting through a mere trickle... would have taken like 3 hours just to fill the fermenter.

I rushed downstairs, grabbed my metal spoon again, shoved it in the sanitizing bucket for 10 minutes, and then proceeded to scrap the hops off the false bottom... flow resumed normally, but tons of crud ended up in the kettle. At the end of it I was just so damn disgusted with everything that I just dumped EVERYTHING into the fermenter to get enough liquid volume (like 11-11.5 gallons) and pitched my damn yeast. I figure the $#!t will settle out and I'll siphon off as much as I can.

So, lessons learned from today? You betcha.

Pumpkin beers are prone to stick (DUH!)
Listening to someone rave about their pumpkin stout recipe on a homebrew forum... NAIVE
Mixing adjucts like Flaked Barley and Pumpkin in significant quantities... STUPID!!
Attempting to brew more than just a 5 gallon batch of pumpkin beer, particularly in a single 10 gallon mash tun ... STUPID!!
Trying to do all this on a stout backbone where you CAN'T FRIGGIN SEE WHAT'S GOING ON... MAJORLY STUPID...

And with that... I believe I am going to take my lumps and go to bed, and pray that tomorrow brings me something other than grief from my homebrew. Considering my Oktoberfest took a tumble out of my friend's truck sitting out front of my house AS HE WAS BRINGING IT IN to get tapped... after sitting in his fridge lagering peacefully for 6 months... I've had quite enough beer-related drama for one friggin weekend. I need sleep or a bullet, and at this point either is probably welcome.

OUT.

Harvest Time

2006-09-07T16:40:00.000-07:00

Over the past week I've picked most of the hops I was growing. My Libery this year totally sucked... I didn't even bother harvesting them. The cones are ridiculously small and I got almost no yield. I think next year I will either relocate them or try to fertilize the crap out of them.

So my growing totals for this season were as follows:

3.0 oz Nugget
1.5 oz Magnum
4.5 oz Cascade

I think I could get a much better Cascade yield if I just had more height to give them, but since they only have about 4' of fence... the yields probably suffer significantly.

On a related topic, Freshops should have their 2006 harvest (all except Saaz) available by Sept 22 according to the owner, Dave. I am probably going to pick up a pound each of Warrior, Simcoe, Columbus, and maybe 2 pounds of Amarillo. I'm also considering 8oz of Pacific Gem just to try them - they sound really tasty from the description. I have been checking their online store daily to see if the Columbus and Amarillo are available yet... apparently Sept 22nd is the magic date (a quick call to Freshops got me this info).

... to those who wait

2006-09-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

Brewed February 19th, Choking Sun Stout has finally found its way to my right-most tap handle tonight. I kicked the keg of Hell's Bells Belgian Pale and Choking Sun makes its debut. And despite being warm... I like it. Alot. It turned out nice... although I suspect the Cascade hop aroma and flavor has diminished over time. I remember trying it many months ago from a bottle-conditioned "bonus" from the couple cases I sent to my cousin in Atlanta, and it definitely has changed with time. I do have a bottle of "Gonzo Porter", courtesy of Fool Circle to compare against.... I will probably do that with him next weekend when he is here brewing our next collaborative effort - a Pale / Barleywine combo.

It has been a long time since I had something dark on tap - I've really missed it. While summer beers are good and all... The dark stuff is where I really flex my brewer's muscles and shine, I think. I love the roast...

The best things come...